Rebellion

The new year was about fear. And moving stories that grabbed the heart. Stories not necessarily ending in freedom.

There seemed to be a lot of rebellion going on in the new year. When the world itself makes us at time move. As the Mayan calendar which ruled the world of Chinese horoscopes over a 26,000 year astrology cycle (the Precession of the Equinoxes) had us all coming to an abrupt end by around Christmas 2012. Or in the belief of the Mayans, the Sumerians, Tibetans, and Egyptians, precisely on December 21, 2012.

Fear always had moved people who mostly never wanted to be changed, This year, fear was stealing people’s money and independence. Fear moved those in power. Revolutions were about movements. When those who lived in pain organized in movement. Over the price of food, or over currency, for people in parts of the world which needed oil to move.

When movement was no longer an elective, for people caught up in hunger and fear. And how it was fear moved a story. It was why people read –looking not so much to be changed but for some wisdom about the world. Perhaps about the coming new world, and how to outfox it, beginning on December 21, 2012.

When inequality threatens stability. The use of language used by the media in this decade to describe current events is interesting. Particularly over the increasing use of the term “Insurgents.” Counter-insurgency involved “action taken by the recognized government of a nation to quell a rebellion against a constituted authority.” Has anyone ever asked why the rebellion in the first place, against a constituted authority? And authority “constituted” by who?

The way brains are wired. When inequality threatens stability. Inflicting more than just pain….but homicide. When you waged organized homicide called war, and society accepted it. And when you controlled a school system that ingrained how brains were wired. And the numbers bear out that a lot of young people believed they were fighting in defense of the United States by waging war in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency action taken by the recognized government of a nation….constituted by who? And if the rebellion in a foreign land was thought to be unjust, who had made the determination and why had the US government selected this particular land, of all the places, to fight over? When you had a neighbor like Pakistan, supposedly an American ally, who was aiding and abetting the rebellion.

When inequality threatens stability, and homicide was waged against you. As pro-democracy uprisings spread across the Middle East, Saudi Arabian princes were feeling increasingly isolated. And the Omaha World Herald was getting around to sending their own reporter to Afghanistan where it is difficult to impossible to make a distinction between an insurgent, a supporter of a non-combatant insurgent, and an entirely uninvolved members of the population. Apparently the publisher thought a story was going to be breaking out in Afghanistan. Soon.

And consequently because of that war, my country has been spending $193 million per day fighting in foreign lands, not really counting the cost, aiding and abetting in a counter-insurgency action taken by a recognized government, and these young people were willing to sacrifice their lives.

When you controlled a school system that ingrained how brains were wired on how to recognize legitimate governments, maybe someone was confused as to the geography –thinking Afghanistan was located next to Egypt or Tunisia. But counter-insurgency operations have often rested on a confused, relativistic distinctions. And in such a secular world, when a school system had ingrained how brains were wired on how to recognize legitimate governments, and maybe someone was confused as to the geography…or very concerned about their reporters’ safety as Islamists rebelled against a constituted authority in some kind of world-wide movement. So maybe exporting “democracy” to a parts of the world which had never had the experience, without checks and balances, without a respect for the dignity of a minority, was not such a good idea.

When you waged organized homicide called war, and the majority in a society accepted it. The way brains are wired, when inequality threatens stability. Never counting the true enduring stress syndromes, in the ecology of the soul, with all the post traumatic stress which came into people’s lives, people’s homes, after war, in representative democratic republics. In stories not necessarily ending in freedom

There seemed to be a lot of rebellion going on in the new year. In the age of globalization, when everybody on earth seemed to want to make some kind of contribution. Republicans exporting “democracy” to a parts of the world which had never had the experience, and now Democrats in the name of hope, if not change, because their brains are wired that way. Not counting the cost. Where inequality threatens stability. When the preeminence of the US dollar was no longer stable, and with its instability, we had now exported the problem elsewhere. To China, and those OPEC nations. All the rebellion resulting from the unrecognized monetary wars, to fund the counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. When inequality threatens stability.

.

Visual Web Search

Where Are You When We Need You, Paul Revere?

Did you notice that Zygi Wilf was, after his purchase of the Minnesota Vikings, as lucky now as Prince Charles? Except for the issue of waiting, with so little hostility directed at the overall process of royalty. “If you got a bill in the mail every year for seven bucks — that’s the cost of a beer at new Target Field — would you consider that a worthwhile contribution for keeping your pro football team?” writes David DeLand in the St. Cloud Times.

Would they ever put the question to the voters in England. About the cost of Buckingham Palace? Or a new house every thirty years? Or about just continued public subsidies to The Royals? In a nation that never believed in royalty, would they ever put the question to Minnesotans?

Where, by the way, had the Kansas City Royals come up with the money to refurbish their stadium, Mr. DeLand of the sports department?

Did you have to be in the souvenir business to notice that licensing fees in the NFL went to the NFL. The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. MLB was late to the game over this concept of licensing fees, by about five or ten years. When, beginning in the 1970s and ever since, it was all about the cost of the official logos on your purchases.

Licenses and licensing fees. Driver’s licenses. Fishing licenses. The revenue always went to a government body. Except when it came to sports authorities. In these parts, the local NFL franchises never paid for new stadiums. The one that was demanded in the late 1970s, with a dome. The father of the mayor of Saint Paul spent a lot of time seeing that the bill was passed. Yeah, in a day before there seemed to be franchise rights sold for elected office, which too many politicians somehow had passed along. Since the days of the Kennedys. The Cuomos. The Bayhs in Indiana. All those bleeding hearts. And the Bushes. And the Clintons. Now with their organized ways to show up at every car crash. Or hurricane. Like they cared.

When public service was now something else. About only power. Too many thoughtless if not clueless sons and daughters of politicians. Jock sniffing for votes. Trying to run a show that a Prince Charles could only envy. With real power.

The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. Or out east. With too many politicians seeking autographs instead of tax revenue from these athletes. There should be a national tax on MLB and the NFL, for revenues raised to pay for the next sports stadium they felt they needed. And yes on the Player’s Association and the NFL Players’ Union, who got something like 55% or more of the revenue.

Prince Charles could envision himself in the picture, as the role model for local baseball people as they made trips to other fiefdoms in the kingdom of MLB, to view their new palaces. Though Prince Charles had been able once to send his wife, when he was married to a blonde, when he tired of it all.

There was a day when kings and queens gave everything away for free. For loyalty. Before the politicians and manufacture’s reps entered the picture, with blackout rights. Did you notice all the hostility directed at the Goldman Sachs who, like all the reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, were making so much? And the ensuing jealousies there. Over money and good looking blondes.

Note all the ambivalence of the audience, the ones watching for free, about these thugs who had no investment in the game. Or the carpetbaggers, with only manufacture’s reps working for them as reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, until they acquired the local NFL franchise, and entered the picture.

”There’s a critical mass of legislators, fans and business leaders,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ Vice President of Public Affairs and Stadium Development. “Who believe this is the year.” Were they the ones on the bicycles at rush hour, tying up traffic? Mostly on Fridays?

“We know that this is a tough discussion, and the economy is tough,” Bagley said. “But we think we have a good story to tell: What we bring to the community.”

His current neighbor across the street is Hennepin County Medical Center, a hospital in the community that was really bleeding, where they seemed to think 2010 was the year for them. Or hope. Like a lot of Viking fans. With bleeding hearts, over politics and sport. This was finally the year? But at HCMC, those fans would die, actually die, unless something was done about the budget issues. This year.

Just as the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, yeah under Prince Charles, was being shut down for fraud, the Redcoats were coming. One if by land. Two if by sea. Or maybe by bike. Or ambulance. Camouflaged in purple.

Visual Web Search

Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost to Europe. War had a way to bring home the present day cost of risk appetites.

Social mood. Political campaigns. Financial fate. Markets go up and they go down, even in the age of austerity, as in the age of conspicuous consumption. By understanding history, humanity has the power to change history. War, and the way we live our lives.

We live in a world that has perverted the concept of remembering people. The media had a cheap story to fill the airwaves now on each September 11th and November 11th. In Europe they still called it Remembrance Day, where the people remembered the war dead and not the military. I was in London on this day in 2000. “Flanders Field.” Armistice Day was not a promotion for the armed services or to be used by the National Guard to recruit the mostly local youth, a lot like those pro football players and their fans in town who “root for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld reminds his audience. The living athletes of combat. Cannon fodder. The human cannon fodder, used too often in the name of nationalism. The “National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq, and maybe one day in Afghanistan? Today was supposed to be a day about the individual people lost to war, not about the uniform worn. At the end of the Great War, in 1919, because of the missing bodies to bury, the November 11th observance was introduced, with a two minute silence. Unbearable mourning continued long after a war was over. Today was supposed to be a day about peace. About real people gone.

Reusse & Company this morning. How does an interview of Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard relate to November 11th and Armistice Day? A day about peace!. Armistice Day was about turning swords into plowshares. November 11th in Europe was Memorial Day, not for the military industrial complex, as Dwight Eisenhower called it, but about individuals compelled to go to war in the name of government and nationalism who died in service. And the people who went, that the world would one day be a better place.

The“National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq and in Afghanistan? How had it happened? The “National Guard” that had replaced the all volunteer army. And why? Since September 11, 2001, the U .S. has deployed troops in 33 countries, according to Major General Larry Shellito. Why? And about the expense of all this? Was the Department of Defense any different than that vote on health care. Which was not at all about health care but health care insurance, and paying for all of this. Without much discussion at all about the real issue of health care. How many MRI machines were needed in a community. Without a discussion of preventative medicine. Why did local kids need to be dispatched to 33 countries in the last 8 years? And where was the discussion on all of this? About the use of “The National Guard?”

No one asked why. Elections have been spun to be one long drone of an argument between two sides. The two sides that had long ago quit communicating, in a world that was unable to find much in the way of meaning. If you thought that television and radio were sounding boards on the issues of the day, then your moderators had become nothing more than game show hosts.

In a current world without conscription, in a world of voluntary service, somehow the message was getting across about the glamor of swords. And now a word from the sponsors.

I am not sure why Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was invited on Armistice Day of all days to be a guest. On morning radio, on Reusse and Company. I did not listen long to the remainder of the show. I don’t think there was a discussion of what happened when you take the young and place their lives in peril, in places where they are seen as the enemy. In some of the 33 places. Thirty-three places. Invading armies? An invitation to the major general as a guest by the same guy who wrote today on his blog:

“Pro football players were merely mercenaries moving through a city for the purpose of collecting a large paycheck. There would be replaced by a different group of mercenaries in a few years, and the foolish fans would cheer for them for no reason other than the appearance of their jerseys.” So wrote Pat Reusse today.

In the civilian world, leadership has to be re-earned in each generation. By sons who followed fathers and grandfathers. In attempts to try to see the future through the past. My grandfather won a purple heart in World War I. He paid a price for his medal every day for the rest of his life. It was more than what combat had done to his hearing. The life expectancy of those Woodrow Wilsons was always so much shorter than the soldier.

“Be careful when you break horses that you don’t break their spirit too.”

If sons and daughters took the time to try to understand history, humanity had the power to change history. In Minnesota, people spent more time contemplating the NFL than they did the deployment since September 11, 2001 of U .S. troops in 33 countries. We thought more about the people there than we about the dollars it had also cost for them to be there. And not many folks were asking why. Or why this was done under the auspices of “The National Guard.”

There was a cost to all of this. In a world of voluntary and involuntary thrift, with personal savings and public policy focused on taxing. In a world where voluntary service could fast become involuntary, as government officials induced borrowing rather than pay now these out of pocket expense. The single greatest risk as the equilibrium between asset classes remains a seismic shift in currency markets. What was this defense policy doing to the U.S. dollar? When a currency holds a nation together, and “the economy — perhaps society at large — assumes more, not less, risk as a function of the path of our attempted fix,” writes Todd Harrison. A Congressman from Tennessee cited Albert Einstein’s belief, in a joint hearing chaired by Senator Kent Konrad from North Dakota, that the greatest power on earth was not atomic energy but compound interest, in this case as a threat to the future of America.

Counting the cost. On Remembrance Day, there is a perversion to discuss the engines of financing as much as there is to discuss the success of recruitment as Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was asked. In a nation that just no longer discussed war.

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost of war. It is seen in the streets of London. In America, Armistice Day was politicized, used as a photo opportunity by politicians hoping to remain an elected official for an entire career, and calling it Veterans’ Day. It was not longer remembered to commemorate the War To End All Wars. About the real people gone. Except in a Europe, which continues to manifest the loss of one generation, of its best and brightest. Watching the scenes this week at the Brandenburg Gate, and seeing the difference in the caliber of leaders 4 generations later, wondering if Europe had ever recovered from void of the War to End All War. Counting the cost.

It must have seemed really heroic to fight in The War To End All Wars.

Blog Networking in Real-time

Visual Web Search

Getting to the Next Party

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? The Roaring Twenties just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun?

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? After the Crash of 2008? People living off the labor of the masses. Like the Lost Generation, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, living in Paris. As the Germans paid the French war reparations. In the Weimar Republic, where the currency was delivered by the wheel barrow.

Like on Wall Street and their salaries? Somewhere the party would keep on going on. Like In China. On September 3, 2009, Chris Oliver wrote a piece about the biggest movement in gold which might have gone little noticed by currency traders. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which functions as the territory’s unofficial central bank, will transfer its gold reserves stored in other vaults to the depository later this year, and the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange had signed an agreement to use the depository for its physical settlement and storage needs.

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? In China. What about the transparency of China? China and corrupt local political war lords, living off the backs of the laborer? The Chinese. A government that limited families to one baby each. To all those advocates of abortion and Planned Parenthood ( not to be confused with family planning decisions), how is that in the way of “choice?” How is that in the way of repression? Would I invest in China? In their currency? China and human rights. How would that be in the way of repression, when I bought into their system?

George Soros. Was it ethical to make $1 billion in one day against the British pound. When the UK, with all of its taxpayers, paid a price. Then the quest of Soros for power through funding the Democrat Party. Warren Buffet. Living off the backs of the laborer? With his growing investment income and value of Berkshire Hathaway. Which was not the same as blue collar hourly wage. These investors who were, who had, reshaped the Democratic Party.

The Democrats who chased away the blue collar worker. The Democrats who chased away the Catholic voter. All to get funding from those Warren Buffet and George Soros-types, reshaping party platform in the name of women’s rights? Or really not much different than in China? With all the transparency of China. China and corrupt local political party bosses, living off the backs of labor? The Chinese family, limited to one baby families. All those advocates of rescuing the free markets, when I bought into their system that allowed the pay scales at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, at the cost of the new blue collar worker enslaved by the technology of Bill Gates. Where workers were required to have cell phones and Black Berries and pagers. Even on vacation.

Economic collapse, with a falling currency? With little difference between the 2 political parties on issues of labor and economic policy. The only difference was based on “women Issues.”

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on, having just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun? With the hyper-inflation still to come, should I buy in? In China?

In the Shadows of Those Cloakrooms

Twelve months ago, there was talk of a revolution coming in the financial markets, which was financially supported by the 3500 lobbyists in Washington, for both parties. There was a new form of fascism in those stories at the time. That is if “fascism” was a word about comforts, with government offering instruction how all of us could live easier. With the help of former Goldman Sachs officers in government, government was now deciding, 12 months later, who were saved, which among us were rescued, at least amongst financial institutions. The free market had been replaced.

If the revolution in the financial markets was not enough, how did you feel as Congress was coming back from summer recess, from all the dog and pony shows, to address not the health care crisis but how, with a nation with an aging populace, to pay for health care. At a point in time when government through Medicare had not exactly been covering the cost of new technology in hospitals, was not paying a fair share. Yet health care itself had never been better.

In the debate, there are people who desire government to decide all of the issues of health care. How much to pay medical institutions, when government was not, had not been, reimbursing hospitals the true cost of taking care of patients with Medicare. Government now wanted to mandate the amount of reimbursement for all procedures, and somehow distribute the cost throughout the entire population in the form of premiums. People who thought government was honest seemed to support the concept. Did they know about the 3500 lobbyists in Washington who had been working for more than a generation to make sure the system was not fair? How had these health care reform supporters felt about the bailouts? (In the case of my Congressional Representative, Betty McCollum supported both the bailout and health care reform.)

Like in those financial bailouts, government was now deciding, if Betty McCollum got her way, who would be saved, which among us would be rescued, amongst both health care institutions, and their patients. Suddenly aware that government knew it had the power to print money, increase property taxes in the states, and if the need were come, to confiscate everything, now they would decided every health care procedure. We had yet to hear specifics how Washington would replace those Blue Cross Blue Shield claims people to make the same kind of every day decisions with all the love and care I found when I went to renew my license plate tabs.

The timing was not real good in September 2009, less than 12 months after the revolution in the financial markets. Not when this discussion seemed more like elective surgery. With a lot of swine flu around. I hoped the vote might be postponed for 6 to 12 months. Until the patients had a lot more strength. Until the president had the courage to introduce the specifics of a bill himself, with some accountability, rather than rely on Congress or the 3500 lobbyists in Washington to take the citizens to a health care destination. Congress had not done a very good job dealing with triage in the last crisis, but that might have been due to a president who just wanted to get out of office after creating the mess himself rather than actually lead.

I wonder if somewhere in those August dog and pony shows from New Hampshire to Montana, if the president heard someone ask when he might introduce the actual legislation that might work. If Congress had spent the time to approve his appointment so he had enough staff to work on a bill.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice

The summer of 2009. In Red Cloud Nebraska. This summer there was a bunch of students from New York University who were putting on a play. Paper Plane Theatre Company, a New York City based troupe of artists, presented a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice to Red Cloud. Who exactly were these guys?

Spending time and money on a production. Then came the critics. People like Frank Rich. Who exactly were these guys?

Critics. And art. And politics. In the summer of 2009.

Community organizers. Who exactly were these guys?

The summer of 2009. The health care reform debated. So was the debate about health care reform or reform how health care would be paid? These pro-choice Democrats who all agreed politics did not belong in the bedroom were now suggesting they belonged in the bed when a loved one was dying?

Those Tea Parties. Who exactly were these people that showed up at town hall meetings. The ones that the community organizer seemed to be promoting. There was a certain irony in all of this. Compared to the Boston Tea Party which was a lot more than a discussion. Compared to community organizers. So thiution?s was an overhaul or a revolution?

Budgets. Spending time and money on a production. Now having to pay attention to the money. Like in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Those art critics neverr paid much attention to the accounting of the cost of a production.

Some of the accounting involved no health care benefits for the illegals. If some kind of bloodless health care bill was going to get through Congress. Yet to me, there was a real sense of irony that these same Tea Party advocates do not question fighting a war, 2 wars, across the sea. There seemed little accounting to the purpose of it all. Taxed incomes to fight wars overseas, seemingly to export democratic values, yet not extending some basic ideals to people within borders on other life and death issues..

Health care according o the elected president in campaign 2008 was a basic human right. Yet so few humans ever had had this basic human right in human history. Anywhere.

The search for identity, when the leader, as an organizer, did not know what to do after he was organized. Community organizers to much beholden to others, without quite knowing his own self. In an era when the foundation of American ideals were shaken. By his predecessor.

Immigrants. Illegals. Critics and art. And politics. In the summer of 2009. When immigration, abortion, bailouts, and accounting departments all came together. In health care reform. With deadlines.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. With no intermission.

A whimsical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice is the story of two lovers who strive to love each other as much as they love their ideas. Told from Eurydice’s point of view, this myth becomes real as it tracks the bittersweet passage from father to husband. From boardwalks to the Underworld, wedding receptions to houses made of string, high-rise apartments to the River of Forgetfulness, the profound humanity and sensory spectacle of Eurydice promises to carry us to new worlds. It is quite a show.

The critics seemed to have gone a bit soft, because one of the organizers was one of Nebraska’s own. A lot like Frank Rich in the summer of 2009. About promises to carry us to new worlds. Without a concern for the accounting department.

In the Wake of the Aquino Death

Cory Aquino died this week.

There had been a revolution in the Philippines after her husband who was the opposition leader had been killed.

In 1972, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. No one knew how long it might last. Marcos effectively exiled and deported Benito Aquino, probably the most popular politician in the country. In 1983, following a kidney transplant, with access to the president curtailed by physical health issues, Imelda Marcos and Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver limited access to the president. Imelda Marcos was said to have flown to New York in May 1983 to convey that Benito Aquino would never again set foot on Philippine soil. There was total chaos as no one knew what was happening, and how the Filipinos might regain control of their country.

Benito Aquino swore to return and, in August 1983 he did, amidst the medical and political crisis. Aquino was assassinated on the tarmac of the airport as his plane landed, by one of the aircraft guards. The guard then committed suicide. Though it was widely believed that Imelda Marcos pursued the elimination of the opposition leader, the chief of staff Ver was tried for the assassination and received a not guilty verdict. The day of the verdict, Cory Aquino announced her candidacy for president, as the EDSA ‘People Power’ revolution removed the Marcos dictatorship and restored democracy in the Philippines in 1986.

The majority of the young people in the Philippines today immediately give an adjective of their Congress men and women. Corrupt is the adjective. Filipino history provides the basis for these feelings, for what occurred bother before Cory Aqunino’s election and history subsequent to her time in office.

The strength of a democracy is judged by the safety extended to journalists pursuing their stories. Th Philippines ranks next to Russia with pursuit of justice when either an opposition leader or a journalist is killed.

Those Dog Days of August

　
　
There was a true revolution in the world markets last September that anyone buying stocks last week seems to have missed. The new world order was now all about social engineering on capitalism. It was only the start, back in September. Bill Gross is the Warren Buffet of the bond market and his PIMCO website with current outlook is must reading.

The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash is by Charles R. Morris, a former banker who “comes to his conclusions based on objectivity, knowledge, and lucid thought.” He wrote this book before the 2008 market collapse which I have not read. I have however read a few pieces by Mr. Morris over the last 12 months, as he is on occasion featured in the Jesuit magazine America.

Credit is the air that financial markets breathe, and when the air is poisoned, there’s no place to hide.” – Charles R. Morris

With an estimate that 20% of the population was really unemployed, there is no reason for the optimism reflected at July’s end in the Wall Street indexes. The procedure for identifying ends of a recession is by looking at when the contraction ends. Per the Wall Street Journal, “The elements that will drive a recovery –rising wages, consumer demand, production and sales — haven’t appeared.”

Government fears throughout the world are that of deflation, because they have no arrows in their quiver to fight it, when it occurs. Paul Virgen wrote on July 31st in the Wall Street Journal that economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires estimate the Commerce Department’s GDP report later today likely would show a contraction of about 1.5% for the second quarter, a less-severe decline than the first quarter’s 5.5% figure.

For me the word contraction is a synonym for “DEFLATION.”

Credit markets froze between September 15th and October 7th when Congress was voting on bailouts, while the battle of ideology was going on between the credit markets and the equity markets as reflected in the spread of about 3.0 percent in the LIBOR rate which one bank charged another bank. That is 3.0 higher than the Fed rate at the time, an unheard of differential. Banks in that environment, no matter the moves put on by the Treasury, were not buying in to the bailout in October 2008. When everything was overvalued, why lend money? So government came to the rescue. Because of government fear about DEFLATION.

I continue to live in a neighborhood where real estate values have barely budged, where the bubble has not burst. The American illusion persists. About values.

Read the current Atlantic Monthly piece about Dr. Doom. Learn about the economist, Hyman Minsky. Read Paul Krugman’s piece now 4 years old. ‘The news that the US housing bubble is over won’t come in the form of plunging prices….” He won the last Pulitizer prize in economics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?scp=1&sq=That%20Hissing%20Sound%20&st=cse

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/roubini

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2009/Global+Central+Bank+Focus+May+2009+Shadow+Banking+and+Minsky+McCulley.htm

http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2008/IO+Dow+5000+Gross+Dec+08.htm

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/riding-the-rollercoaster-at-cramer-berkowitz

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/investing-rules-for-the-end-of-civilization-2009-07-28

On May 2009, Paul McCulley of PIMCO wrote, “The longer people make money by taking risk, the more imprudent they become in risk-taking. While they’re doing that, it’s self-fulfilling on the way up. If everybody is simultaneously becoming more risk-seeking, that brings in risk premiums, drives up the value of collateral, increases the ability to lever and the game keeps going. Human nature is inherently pro-cyclical, and that’s essentially what the Minsky thesis is all about.”

Hyman Minsky was an economist who has gained a lot of disciples over the past few years. He wrote about bubbles that occur in an economy. He theorized that a bubble begins with displacement caused by a significant invention, like the internet. A displacement creates profitable opportunities in any given affected sector but, rather than invention alone, financial innovation is necessary for access to cheap credit before a kick-off to an over-trading phase. Euphoria ensues as people pile into the sector, with a driving demand to affect higher prices, often with borrowed money. Ponzi’ investors join in speculation that someone will buy their assets at higher prices. But markets eventually, whether due to lenders tightening lending criteria or insiders selling out, hit a peak. Panic then sets in. With a stampede out of the market, bankruptcies ensue.

That was why credit markets froze in September 2008. Bankers who have always been conservative. Do you know any? They were not buying into the social engineering on capitalism. There was a revolution in capitalism with this bailout. No one wanted to purchase shares in these banks that were illiquid. Based on the value of real estate, there was a bubble. A huge illusion about valuations of homes. The banks owned all the real estate. And it is said that the banks in Europe were in worse shape. In September 2008, bankers neither trusted the balance sheet of another bank nor the government. Thus the state of the credit markets. Bankers understood too well the persisting illusion.

By the end of October 2008, more than half of the U.S. banks were pretend banks. With no capital. Citibank. Bank of America. Wachovia. The bailout has worked to avoid an immediate collapse that would have had consequences worse than in Russia in 1906. Or in Russia in 1917. The panic, the revolution did not occur as a result of a couple years of events. Immediately.

“If drugs continue to be injected which mask symptoms rather than address the disease (medicine in the form of debt destruction), the likelihood of a seismic readjustment increases in kind, writes Todd Harrison, about the dollar. “As governments take on more risk” as they price assets on behalf of the market and transfer debt from private to public, “the common denominator, or release valve, becomes the currency.”

Some facts:

World GDP $47 trillion
World stock valuation $121 trillion
Bond market $85 trillion
Credit derivatives $473 trillion

There would be turmoil in currencies in the coming year as a consequence of the political fallout over American debt, before this was over. It was all because there was $460 trillion to $560 trillion in derivatives, and there is not enough money in the world to keep the system of capitalism going. The social engineering last September was all about government trying to keep capitalism going. Those derivatives, not backed up by reserves. When the laws of survival of the fittest in the market place had been always about letting systems collapse.

These news items in July 2009 you might have missed:

“Joining the growing chorus questioning the U.S. dollar’s unofficial position as global reserve currency, in India, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Suresh Tendulkar, is urging India to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars,” according to Bloomberg News.

“Zeng Peiyan, the head of China Center for International Economic Exchanges and the former Chinese Vice-Premier, in a speech in Beijing on Friday called for a new system to ensure the stability of the major reserve currencies,” the China Daily reported.

“To prevent speculative and manipulative attacks on their currencies, the world’s central banks must acquire and hold dollar reserves in corresponding amounts to their currencies in circulation. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold. This creates a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world’s central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves, making it stronger.” –2008 piece by Henry Liu

“Tensions mounting between the People’s Bank of China’s economic concerns over China’s holdings of dollars, with the earlier call by central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan for the development of a new super-sovereign currency largely taking the place of the dollar, and the Chinese government, with their “diplomatic reasons” for toning down their criticism, said Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange. The Chinese government is still more happy to play to the tune of the Bernanke-Geithner camp which sees leaning against the wind in order to protect the U.S. dollar as a necessary evil,” Gallo said.”

And in April 2009, the head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued a statement published on its website that banks need to guard against making risky loans and instead focus more on sustainable lending practices. Banks must be “on high alert for the accumulation of hidden risks as loans surge,” Liu Mingkang said. According to published reports in remarks made at the Boao Forum for Asia, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last spring called for more surveillance of countries that issue major reserve currencies. That would be the United States. This statement comes on the heels of discussion at the G20 meeting of a new world currency. There is growing distrust of America and the politics involved in our currency. Last spring in an essay published on the central bank’s web site, the head of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, proposed the creation a new international reserve currency. Seeking to expand currency swap agreements that are seen as a step toward eventually making the yuan more of a global reserve asset, Wen said, “We should give full play to bilateral currency swap agreements and will study expanding currency swaps in scale and to more countries.”

“There is no chance that a nation as reputationally scarred and maimed as the US is today, could extract any true ‘alpha’ from foreign investors for the next 25 years or so. So the US will have to start to pay a normal market price for the net resources it borrows from abroad. It will therefore have to start to generate primary surpluses, on average, for the indefinite future. A nation with credibility as regards its commitment to meeting its obligations could afford to delay the onset of the period of pain. It could borrow more from abroad today, because foreign creditors and investors are confident that, in due course, the country would be willing and able to generate the (correspondingly larger) future primary external surpluses required to service its external obligations. I don’t believe the US has either the external credibility or the goodwill capital any longer to ask, Oliver Twist-like, for a little more leeway, a little more latitude. I believe that markets – both the private players and the large public players managing the foreign exchange reserves of the PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, the Gulf states, Japan and other nations – will make this clear.

“Keynesian demand stimulus may work for a while (a couple of years, say). When the consequences for the public debt of both the Keynesian stimulus and the realization of the losses from the assets and commitments the Fed and the Treasury have taken onto their balance sheets become apparent, the demand stimulus will fade and may be reserved as precautionary behavior takes over in the private sector. My recommendation is to go easy on the fiscal stimulus. The US government is ill-placed financially and fiscally, to engage in short-term fiscal heroics. All they can really do is pray for a stronger-than-expected revival of global demand, without any major stimulus from the US.” -Willem H. Buiter of the European Institute, Professor of European Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science

William McChesney Martin was the Fed’s chairman from 1951 through 1970. Martin said his job as central-bank chief was “to take away the punchbowl just as the party gets going” to keep the economy from overheating. Paul McCulley said that the government’s efforts to aid financial firms in effect are reversing this well-known quip. “Now they are actually creating ‘punchbowl banks’ where you have the equity coming in from the Treasury,” McCulley said. “They are de facto banks owned by the Treasury and funded by the Fed. If the U.S. is putting its ‘full faith and credit’ behind the liabilities of the various financial institutions, then I want to be a co-investor with Uncle Sam, which is another way of saying I want to invest with the American taxpayer. It sounds a little like socialism only because it is.” The government’s attempts to revive lending have led policy makers to use taxpayer money to recreate “the shadow banking system,” he said.

According to Pimm Fox and Daniel Kruger, “So far, that has included expanding the Fed’s assets to $2.2 trillion, injecting $270 billion of capital into what Paul McCulley called ‘punchbowl banks,’ and promising to buy $600 billion in mortgage securities related to government-sponsored enterprises.” The government’s attempts to revive lending have led policy makers to use taxpayer money to recreate “the shadow banking system,” he said. Before the start of the financial crisis in August 2007, that comprised institutions which lacked access to the Fed’s discount window and whose customer accounts were not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

So that 12 months later, we are all back to where the world was, with just a little more transparency, recreating “the shadow banking system.”
　
Money always seemed to affect the outcome of elections.

In June 2009 there was a summit of the world’s four largest emerging economies, as leaders from of China, India Russia, and Brazil met in Yekaterinburg, Russia to discuss reforming the global financial system and lessening reliance on the United States. These four countries hold nearly 40 percent of the world’s currency reserves and make up 15 percent of the global economy.

A joint BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) statement issued before the summit expressed a commitment to advance the reform of international financial institutions so as to reflect changes in the world economy. The statement said. “The emerging and developing economies must have a greater voice and representation in international financial institutions,” calling for a greater role for developing nations in global financial institutions and the United Nations. Leaders discussed investing their reserves in one another’s bonds, swapping reserve currencies and increasing the role of Special Drawing Rights, an international reserve asset. Discussions took place earlier in the day in the Urals city at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization about the creation of a supranational currency and lessening global reliance on the U.S. dollar. President Dmitry Medvedev was an outspoken a critic of the current world financial system, reserving his most bold comments for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. “There cannot be a successful global currency system if the financial instruments it uses are denominated in only one currency, which is the case today. And that currency is the dollar.”

But the idea of replacing the dollar found little traction with China, which holds $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.

Other notable quotes this year, not dealing with currency:

“With stocks tied to bonds, bonds tied to housing, housing tied to the credit crisis, and everyone hitched to the government, this was all like the conga line to the poor house.” -Craig Rappaport, wealth manager at Janney Montgomery Scott

Bob Prince hedge fund manager of Bridgewater Associates, on downward spirals: “The pressure on corporate margins is now passing through to employment cuts. Employment cuts will reduce incomes which will raise defaults. Rising defaults will hinder bank capital adequacy, which will constrain credit growth, which will slow spending, which will hurt profit margins, then employment. This chain of events was virtually sealed when demand dropped off the table in October, although it was highly probable earlier this year when credit conditions deteriorated rapidly. We are now in the middle of it and there really isn’t much that anyone can do besides hang on.”

“My transgenerational stock market outlook is this: stocks are cheap when valued within the context of a financed-based economy once dominated by leverage, cheap financing, and even lower corporate tax rates. That world, however, is in our past not our future. More regulation, lower leverage, higher taxes, and a lack of entrepreneurial testosterone are what we must get used to – that and a government checkbook that allows for healing, but crowds the private sector into an awkward and less productive corner. Dow 5,000? We don’t have to go there if current domestic and global policies are focused on asset price support and eventual recapitalization of lending institutions. But 14,000 is a stretch as well. One only has to recognize that roughly 20% of bank capital is now owned by the U.S. government and that a near proportionate share of profits will flow in that direction as well. Better to own corporate bonds than corporate stocks, but that’s a story for another Investment Outlook.” -William H. Gross , Managing Director, PIMCO, December 1, 2008

Bill Gross, in October 2008: “What we are witnessing is essentially the breakdown of our modern-day banking system, a complex of leveraged lending so hard to understand that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke required a face-to-face refresher course from hedge fund managers in mid-August 2007.

I have never taken creative accounting….full disclosure. But anyone who was investing might recognize that the greatest opportunity to make money is now in the credit markets and not equities.

Now about the political consequences over the social engineering on capitalism which would be studied in history books in a thousand years, if the world survived this mess……. oh, that’s another lecture.

Those Domestic Situations

The New York Times reports today that the Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power.

According to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September 2008, he brought up that that the crisis might even require a declaration of martial law, as a worst-case scenario.

The Associated Press notes that dispatching troops into the streets is virtually unheard of. “The Constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

A 1994 U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) allegedly allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage. The Clinton administration had set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.”

In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. Prior to this, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.

So that Associated Press note about “dispatching troops into the streets as virtually unheard of” is a historic note. It is a mistake to say the “constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

Pentagon officials at one point to end 2008 were projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops to be stationed in the United States by 2011.

The Minsky Watch

There has been a lot of public discourse over the last year of systemic risk without any real systemic re-pricing of risk in my neighborhood, which would have a deflationary affect. Now my home is located within a few blocks of some famous people, like Joe Mauer and Garrison Keiller. From my own research, the homes around here have barely budged in valuation over the past year. Home now selling for $575,000 that would not have brought $325,000 since the time I moved into the neighborhood in the 1990s. In times when the financial system economy was not overlooking the precipice, trapped in a classic debt-deflation cycle as it seemed now in which falling asset prices and declining consumer demand transmit deflation through the economy. It had not really happened much yet in my neighborhood.

A number of publications have referred to real unemployment to be near 20%, despite the $787 billion stimulus package. State budgets are drowning in red ink, soon to deepen with jobless claims and Medicaid bills, hesitant to spend consumers as paychecks shrink and jobs disappear. I would not be buying stocks with this kind of economic forecast, yet this week the indexes on Wall Street sprouted up like Iowa corn.

The speculators still abound. People who are gambling with their money in these times, as they had gambled turning real estate in this decade. In May 2009, Paul McCulley of PIMCO wrote, “The longer people make money by taking risk, the more imprudent they become in risk-taking. While they’re doing that, it’s self-fulfilling on the way up. If everybody is simultaneously becoming more risk-seeking, that brings in risk premiums, drives up the value of collateral, increases the ability to lever and the game keeps going. Human nature is inherently pro-cyclical, and that’s essentially what the Minsky thesis is all about.”

Hyman Minsky is an economist who has gained a lot of disciples over the past few years. He wrote about bubbles that occur in an economy. He theorized that a bubble begins with displacement caused by a significant invention like the internet. A displacement creates profitable opportunities in any given affected sector but, rather than invention alone, financial innovation is necessary for access to cheap credit before a kick-off to an over-trading phase. Euphoria ensues as people pile into the sector, with a driving demand to affect higher prices, often with borrowed money. Ponzi’ investors join in speculation that someone will buy their assets at higher prices. But markets eventually, whether due to lenders tightening lending criteria or insiders selling out, hit a peak. Panic then sets in. With a stampede out of the market, bankruptcies ensue.

James Fallow’s opening paragraph in this months Atlantic Monthly is: “On March 28, 2007, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appeared before the congressional Joint Economic Committee to discuss trends in the U.S. economy. Everyone was concerned about the ‘substantial correction in the housing market,’ he noted in his prepared remarks. Fortunately, ‘the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.’ Better still, ‘the weakness in housing and in some parts of manufacturing does not appear to have spilled over to any significant extent to other sectors of the economy.’ On that day, the Dow Jones industrial average was above 12,000, the S&P 500 was above 1,400, and the U.S. unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. That assurance looks bad in retrospect, as do many of Bernanke’s claims through the rest of the year: that the real-estate crisis was working itself out and that its problems would likely remain ‘niche’ issues. If experts can be this wrong—within two years, unemployment had nearly doubled, and financial markets had lost roughly half their value—what good is their expertise? And of course it wasn’t just Bernanke, though presumably he had the most authoritative data to draw on. Through the markets’ rise to their peak late in 2007 and for many months into their precipitous fall, the dominant voices from the government, financial journalism, and the business and financial establishment under- rather than overplayed the scope of the current disaster.”

Paul McCulley delivered a speech to the 17th Annual Hyman Minsky Conference on April 17, 2008. He stated, “Since August 2007, the shadow banking system – defined as any levered lender who does not have access to (1) deposit insurance and/or (2) the Fed’s discount window – experienced a modern-day run, with asset-backed commercial paper holders refusing to roll over their paper. It has not been fun. It has not been pretty.” And he saw that it was not over, as the ensuing 15 months proved. Whereas James Fallow cited Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke discussion of trends in the U.S. economy on March 28, 2007, Paul McCulley of PIMCO on April 17, 2008, 25 weeks before the Lehman Brother collapse, talked about a lot of things that Bernanke publicly was oblivious to.

Paul McCulley of PIMCO wrote on April 17, 2008: “Which brings us back to where I began: Minsky’s insight that financial capitalism is inherently and endogenously given to bubbles and busts is not just right, but spectacularly right. And when the financial regulators are not only asleep but actively cheerleading financial innovation outside their direct purview, a disaster is in the making, as the last year has taught us. We have much to learn and relearn from the great man as we collectively restore prudential common sense to bank regulation – both for conventional banks and shadow banks.

In May 2009, Paul McCulley wrote, “Human nature is inherently pro-cyclical, and that’s essentially what the Minsky thesis is all about. He says ‘from time to time, capitalist economies exhibit inflations and debt deflations which seem to have the potential to spin out of control. In such processes the economic system’s reactions to a movement of the economy amplify the movement – inflation feeds upon inflation and debt-deflation feeds upon debt-deflation.’”

Paul McCulley on April 17, 2008: “Whatever moment you pick for the Moment, we have since been traveling the reverse Minsky journey: moving backward through the three-part progression, with asset prices falling, risk premiums moving higher, leverage getting scaled back and economic growth getting squeezed. Minsky’s Ponzi debt units are only viable as long as the levered assets appreciate in price. But when the price of the assets decline, as we’ve seen in the U.S. housing market, Minsky tells us we must go through the process of increasing risk-taking in reverse – with all its consequences.

“The recent Minsky moment comprised three bubbles bursting: in property valuation in the U.S., in mortgage creation, again, principally in the U.S., and in the shadow banking system, not just in the U.S. but around the world. The blowing up of these three bubbles demanded a systemic re-pricing of all risk, which was deflationary for all risk asset prices. These developments are, as Minsky declared, a prescription for an unstable system – to wit, a system in which the purging of capitalist excesses is not a self-correcting therapeutic process, but a self-feeding contagion: debt deflation.

“Fittingly, the last debt unit on the forward Minsky journey is called a Ponzi unit, defined as a borrower who has insufficient cash flow to even pay the full interest on a loan, much less pay down the principal over time. Now, how and why would such a borrower ever find a lender to make him a loan? Simple: as long as home prices are universally expected to continue rising indefinitely, lenders come out of the woodwork offering loans with what is called negative amortization, meaning that if you can’t pay the full interest charge, that’s okay; they’ll just tack the unpaid amount on to your principal. At the maturity of the loan, of course, the balloon payment will be bigger than the original loan.

“As long as lenders made loans available on virtually non-existent terms, the price didn’t really matter all that much to borrowers; after all, housing prices were going up so fast that a point or two either way on the mortgage rate didn’t really matter. The availability of credit trumped the price of credit. Such is always the case in manias. It is also the case that once a speculative bubble bursts, reduced availability of credit will dominate the price of credit, even if markets and policymakers cut the price. The supply side of Ponzi credit is what matters, not the interest elasticity of demand.

“Clearly the explosion of exotic mortgages in recent years have been textbook examples of Minsky’s speculative and Ponzi units. But they seemed okay, as long as expectations of stably rising home prices were realized. Except, of course they cannot forever be realized. At some point, valuation does matter! How could lenders ignore this obvious truth? Because while it was going on, they were making tons of money. Tons of money does serious damage to the eyesight. And our industry’s moral equivalent of optometrists, the regulators and the rating agencies, are humans too.

“As long as the forward Minsky journey was unfolding, rising house prices covered all shameful underwriting sins. Essentially, the mortgage arena began lending against asset value only, rather than asset value plus the borrowers’ income. The mortgage originators, who were operating on the originate-to-distribute model, had no skin in the game – no active interest – because they simply originated the loans and then repackaged them.
But who they distributed these packages to, interestingly enough, were the shadow banks. So we had an originate-to-distribute model and no skin in the game for the originator, and the guy in the middle was being asked to create product for the shadow banking system.

“The system was demanding product. Well, if you’ve got to feed the beast that wants product, how do you do it? You have a systematic degradation in underwriting standards so that you can originate more. But as you originate more, you bid up the price of property, and therefore you say, “These junk borrowers really aren’t junk borrowers. They’re not defaulting.” So you drop your standards once again. And you take prices up. And you still don’t get a high default rate. The reason this system works is that you, as the guy in the middle, had somebody bless it: the credit rating agencies. A key part of keeping the three bubbles (property valuation, mortgage finance and the shadow banking system) going was that the rating agencies thought the default rates were low because they were low. But they were low because the degradation of underwriting standards was driving up asset prices.

“Both regulators and rating agencies were beguiled by very low default rates during the period of soaring home prices. It all went swimmingly, dampening volatility in a self-reinforcing way, until the bubbles created by financial alchemy hit the fundamental wall of housing affordability.

“Ultimately, fundamentals do matter! We have a day of reckoning, the day the balloon comes due, the margin call, the Minsky Moment.

“If the value of the house hasn’t gone up, then Ponzi units, particularly those with negatively-amortizing loans, are toast. And if the price of the house has fallen, speculative units are toast still in the toaster. Ponzi borrowers are forced to “make position by selling out position,” frequently by stopping (or not even beginning!) monthly mortgage payments, the prelude to eventual default or jingle mail. Ponzi lenders dramatically tighten underwriting standards, at least back to Minsky’s speculative units – loans that may not be self-amortizing, but at least are underwritten on evidence that borrowers can pay the required interest, not just the teaser rate, but the fully-indexed rate on ARMs.
From a microeconomic point of view, such a tightening of underwriting standards is a good thing, albeit belated. But from a macroeconomic point of view, it is a deflationary turn of events, as serial refinancers, riding the back of presumed perpetual home price appreciation, are trapped long and wrong. And in this cycle, it’s not just the first-time homebuyer that is trapped, but also the speculative Ponzi long: borrowers who weren’t covering a natural short – remember, you are born short a roof over your head, and must cover, either by renting or buying – but rather betting on a bigger fool to take them out (“make book”, in Minsky’s words). The property bubble stops bubbling and when it does, both the property market and the shadow banking system go bust.

“The asset class imploded violently, when the conventional basis of valuation was undermined for the originate-to-distribute (to the shadow banking system) business model.

“And the implosion was on Wall Street and next on Main Street, with debt-deflation accelerating in the wake of a mushrooming mortgage credit crunch, notably in the subprime sector, but also up the quality ladder. Yes, we are now experiencing a reverse Minsky journey, where instability will, in the fullness of time, restore stability, as Ponzi debt units evaporate, speculative debt units morph after the fact into Ponzi units and are severely disciplined if not destroyed, and even hedge units take a beating. The shadow banking system contracts implosively as a run on its assets forces it to delever, driving down asset prices, eroding equity – and forcing it to delever again. The shadow banking system is particularly vulnerable to runs – commercial paper investors refusing to re-up when their paper matures, leaving the shadow banks with a liquidity crisis – a need to tap their back-up lines of credit with real banks or to liquidate assets at fire sale prices. Real banks are in a risk-averse state of mind when it comes to lending to shadow banks, lending when required by backup lines but not seeking to proactively increase their footings to the shadow banking system but, if anything, reduce them. Thus, the mighty gulf between the Fed’s liquidity cup and the shadow banking system’s parched liquidity lips.

“The entire progression self-feeds on the way down, just like it self-feeds on the way up. It’s incredibly pro-cyclical. The regulatory response is also incredibly pro-cyclical. You have a rush to laxity on the way up, and you have a rush to the opposite on the way back down. And essentially, on the way down, you have the equivalent of Keynes’s paradox of thrift – the paradox of delevering. It can make sense for each individual institution, for a shadow bank or even a real bank, to delever, but collectively, they can’t all delever at the same time.

“Along the way, policymakers slowly have recognized the Minsky Moment followed by the unfolding reverse Minsky journey. But I want to emphasize “slowly,” as policymakers, collectively, tend to suffer from more than a thermos full of denial. Part of the reason is human nature: to acknowledge a reverse Minsky journey, it is first necessary to acknowledge a preceding forward Minsky journey – a bubble in asset and debt prices – as the marginal unit of debt creation morphed from hedge to speculative to Ponzi. That is difficult for policymakers to do, especially ones who claim an inability to recognize bubbles while they are forming and, therefore, don’t believe that prophylactic action against them is appropriate. But framing policies to mitigate the damage of a reverse Minsky journey requires that policymakers openly acknowledge that we are where we are because they let the invisible, if not crooked, hand of financial capitalism go precisely where Professor Minsky said it would go, unless checked by the visible fist of counter-cyclical, rather than pro-cyclical, regulatory policy.

“That’s not to say that Minsky had confidence that regulators could stay out in front of short-term profit-driven innovation in financial arrangements. Indeed, he believed precisely the opposite. Minsky wrote these words in 1986:

“In a world of businessmen and financial intermediaries who aggressively seek profit, innovators will always outpace regulators; the authorities cannot prevent changes in the structure of portfolios from occurring. What they can do is keep the asset-equity ratio of banks within bounds by setting equity-absorption ratios for various types of assets. If the authorities constrain banks and are aware of the activities of fringe banks and other financial institutions, they are in a better position to attenuate the disruptive expansionary tendencies of our economy.”

Three years later, we can only bemoan that his sensible counsel was ignored and the economy experienced the explosive growth of the shadow banking system, or what Minsky cleverly called “fringe banks and other financial institutions.”
Minsky’s insight that financial capitalism is inherently and endogenously given to bubbles and busts is not just right, but spectacularly right. We have much to learn and relearn from the great man as we collectively restore prudential common sense to bank regulation – both for conventional banks and shadow banks.

“Meantime, we’ve got a problem: we’re on a reverse Minsky journey. The private sector wants to shrink and de-risk its balance sheet, so someone has to take the other side of the trade to avoid a depression – the sovereign. We pretend that the Fed’s balance sheet and Uncle Sam’s balance sheet are in entirely separate orbits because of the whole notion of the political independence of the central bank in making monetary policy. But when you think about it, not from the standpoint of making monetary policy but of providing balance sheet support to buffer a reverse Minsky journey, there’s no difference between Uncle Sam’s balance sheet and the Fed’s balance sheet. Economically speaking, they’re one and the same.

“I think we’re pretty well advanced along this reverse Minsky journey, and it’s a lot quicker than the forward journey for a very simple reason. The forward journey is essentially momentum-driven; there is a systematic relaxation of underwriting standards and all that sort of thing, but it doesn’t create any pain for anybody. The reverse journey, however, does create pain, otherwise known as one giant margin call. The reverse journey comes to an end when the full faith and credit of the sovereign’s balance sheet is brought into play to effectively take the other side of the trade. No, I’m not a socialist; I’m just a practical person. You’ve got to have somebody on the other side of the trade. The government not only steps up to the risk-taking and spending that the private sector is shirking, but goes further, stepping up with even more vigor, providing a meaningful reflationary thrust to both private sector risk assets and aggregate demand for goods and services.

Thus, policymakers have a tricky balancing act: let the deflationary pain unfold, as it’s the only way to find a bottom of undervalued asset prices from presently overvalued asset prices, while providing sufficient monetary and fiscal policy safety nets to keep the deflationary process from spinning out of control. Debt deflation is a beast of burden that capitalism cannot bear alone. It ain’t rich enough, it ain’t tough enough.

“Capitalism’s prosperity is hostage to the hope that policymakers are not simply too blind to see.

“As long as we have reasonably deregulated markets and a complex and innovative financial system, we will have Minsky journeys, forward and reverse, punctuated by Minsky Moments. That is reality. You can’t eliminate the Minsky journeys. It’s a matter of having the good sense to have in place a counter-cyclical regulatory policy to help modulate human nature.

“Not to say that Minsky had confidence that regulators could stay out in front of short-term profit-driven innovation in financial arrangements. Indeed, he believed precisely the opposite:

“In a world of businessmen and financial intermediaries who aggressively seek profit, innovators will always outpace regulators; the authorities cannot prevent changes in the structure of portfolios from occurring. What they can do is keep the asset-equity ratio of banks within bounds by setting equity-absorption ratios for various types of assets. If the authorities constrain banks and are aware of the activities of fringe banks and other financial institutions, they are in a better position to attenuate the disruptive expansionary tendencies of our economy.”

“While asset prices, and notably property prices, were soaring, it was all quite dandy. Which, of course, propelled the Forward Minsky Journey. There were no regulatory cops on the beat, only regulatory czars in corner offices, actively accommodating growth in the shadow banking system. Most fundamentally, regulatory authorities ignored the systemic liquidity risk imposed by the shadow banking system versus the conventional banking system: without access to either deposit insurance or the Fed’s discount window, and mostly void of any meaningful term financing, the shadow was a sitting duck for a classic run on liquidity. And ever since last August, that has been precisely what has unfolded, punctuated by the run on Bear Stearns last month.

“Along the way, the Fed has taken gallant and bold steps to inject liquidity into the markets, creating lending facility after lending facility. But up until last month, when the Fed opened the discount window to investment banks, who are the largest shadow banks of all, the Fed’s role as liquidity provider of last resort was simply not effective, however valiant it may have been. Channeling liquidity to conventional banks, in hopes that they would pass it along to shadow banks, simply did not work very well, though it did have the salutatory effect of allowing some banks to (reluctantly) expand their balance sheets so as to absorb assets being disgorged by shadow banks.

“As the Bear Stearns rescue forcefully demonstrated, the Fed had no choice but to open the discount window to investment banks, to facilitate the takeover of Bear in particular and even more importantly, to prevent a cascading of runs. This was a moment of truth and clarity, if there ever was one. I applaud the Fed for doing what it had but no choice to do. At the same time, the Fed’s action demands a complete re-think of the bifurcated regulatory regime for conventional banks and investment banks.

James Fallow: “The difference was partly ‘debt versus equity.’ That is, a loss of stock-market value is damaging, but defaults on loans which put banks themselves in trouble had a ‘multiplier’ effect. The difference between this crash and others, Nouriel Roubini said, was that the speculative bubble involved so much more of the economy than the term ‘subprime’ could suggest. ‘It was subprime, it was near-prime, it was prime mortgages. It was home-equity-loan lines. It was commercial real estate, it was credit cards, and it was auto loans. When there’s a credit crunch, for every dollar of capital the financial institution loses, the contraction of credit has to be 10 times bigger.’

“‘Bernanke should have known better. But it’s not really about him. It’s in everybody’s interest to let the bubble go on. Instead of the wisdom of the crowd, we got the madness of the crowd. So when the proverbial stuff hit the fan in the summer of 2007, the Fed and the Bush administration were initially taken by surprise,’ Nouriel Roubini concluded. ‘Their analysis had been wrong. And they didn’t understand the severity of what was to come. And all along, their policy was two steps behind the curve. We’ve had a model of growth in which over the last 15 or 20 years, too much human capital went into finance rather than more-productive activities. It was a growth model where we over-invested in housing, the most unproductive form of capital. We have been in a growth model based on bubbles, and the model has broken down, because we borrowed too much. The only time we are growing fast enough is when there is a big bubble.

And so the government now more than doubled note and bond offerings to $963 billion in the first half of 2009 as it tries to end the recession. It may sell another $1.1 trillion by year-end, according to Barclays. The second-half sales would be more than the amount sold in all of 2008.

“Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability, we risk having neither financial stability nor durable economic growth,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said this week in semi-annual testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. Bernanke said “limited inflation pressures” will allow policy makers to keep interest rates near zero for an “extended period.”

“‘The Fed is now embarked on a policy,’ Nouriel Roubini said, ‘in which they are in effect directly monetizing about half of the budget deficit. The public debt is going up, and the federal government is covering about half of that total by printing new money and sending it to banks. In the short run, that monetization is not inflationary.” But banks are holding much of the money themselves. ‘They are not re-lending it. So that money is not going anywhere and is becoming inflationary.’”

But at some point the recession will end—Roubini’s guess is 2011–and banks will want to lend the money. People and businesses will want to borrow and spend it, James Fallow’s piece concludes.

Writes Alan Blinder, a Princeton University professor of economics and public affairs, in the Wall Street Journal: “Economic conditions are dreadful at the bottom of a deep recession. Jobs are scarce. Layoffs abound. Businesses scramble for penurious customers. Companies go bankrupt. Banks suffer loan losses. Tax receipts plunge. Government budget deficits balloon. All this and more in what now looks to be the country’s worst recession since 1938. So why is everyone so blue when the U.S. economy is hitting bottom. The good news also is the bad news. As the economy hits bottom, it’s a long uphill climb to get out.

Paul McCulley of PIMCO and Bill Gross of PIMCO and Mohamed El-Erian at PIMCO have had a better public perspective than Mr. Bernanke has over the past two years. As did Nouriel Roubini. It is hard to believe his name will be put in nomination at the soon to end current term as Fed chief, no matter his performance since September 2008. Even though the real-estate crisis was working itself out and its problems likely remained ‘niche’ issues, and had not approached my neighborhood.

Visual Web Search

Visual Web Search